


Interlude

by RiverK



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Fanart Included, Finn is a virgin, Gen, Mostly Gen, Napping, but could be the start of some finnrey slow burn, but mostly it's finn and rey navigating the emotional intimacy of their connection, teensy bit of finnrose, these two are tired k, these two never really had friends before, they've had a really long week, which is why i don't think either of them are ready for anything romantic just yet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-21
Updated: 2018-03-21
Packaged: 2019-04-05 14:52:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14046675
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RiverK/pseuds/RiverK
Summary: The timelines seem a bit confusing, but I suppose it's safe to say that both TFA and TLJ happened within the span of about two weeks. Finn and Rey have gone through several upheavals. Now that they're finally together again, they take the opportunity to decompress. Two lonely, frightened, and exhausted people carve out a bit of breathing room for themselves, with each other.





	Interlude

**Author's Note:**

> Self-beta-ed, so proceed at your own peril. And also please tell me if there's anything I might have missed. Also Star Wars doesn't belong to me, and if you sue me, you'll get nothing because I am one of the Poors. I have negative money. Good luck.

  
The _Millennium Falcon_ shuddered through the blue of hyperspace, full to capacity with the straggling remnants of the Resistance. Sentients sat or stood along its pocked hallways and pooled in small groups in the cargo bay and the mess. Its walls buzzed with the sounds of conversation, and the air smelled of too many bodies --human and otherwise- in an enclosed space.

General Leia and the remaining Brass stood in a tense huddle just outside the cockpit. Rey could hear the susurrus of their conversation from beyond the doorway, just audible enough not to be understandable through the Falcon’s engines.

She didn’t know where to go. She had plugged in the coordinates for Ach To before they had launched into hyperspace --it was the only place she could think of at the spur of the moment, and General Leia hadn’t said anything about where to go yet. It was possible that the Resistance needed to be someplace else. She didn’t know. She was just the co-pilot now.

Chewbacca eyed her sidelong for an interminable moment. _Credit for your thoughts?_   He finally rumbled quietly. His eyes flickered behind them, towards Leia’s low murmur.

Rey felt her mouth stretch sideways in something that was almost a smile. The last few puffs of adrenaline that had coursed through her on Crait had long dissipated into the cockpit’s close, humid air. “We’re the Resistance now,” she kept her voice low, barely a whisper --as if she was afraid someone else would hear her. “That,” she tilted her head back towards the activity seething through the Falcon, encompassing the too-few sentients behind them. “That’s all that’s left.”

 _I know._ Chewie stretched a long arm across to the co-pilot’s seat and gave her shoulder a quick squeeze. _It doesn’t look good._

Rey snorted. That was certainly one way of putting it.

 _Listen,_ he said, _You’ve had a long day, and we’ve been flying for hours now. R2 and I can take care of things here. Go get some rest._

The finality in his tone made it clear that it wasn’t a suggestion.

Rey wanted to argue, but the Force thrummed with the grief and exhaustion of the forty-odd individuals that pushed over the edges of the _Falcon’s_ maximum carrying capacity. It was making her back teeth ache, and stars, she was _tired_. She sighed.

“Fine, but only because I’m taking the next shift.” Worn leather creaked as she hefted herself out of the co-pilot’s seat. She gave Chewie’s chair a pat as she moved past him, and lingered a moment to look at the viewscreen, into the rush of hyperspace. They had another couple of shifts’ worth of hyperspace travel before they reached Ach To’s quadrant. There was nothing to do but wait.

Finn stood by the entrance to the cockpit. He didn’t look like he had moved since Rey had forced herself to separate from him to help pilot the ship.

Had he been waiting for her all this time? Her eyes flickered to the tense huddle of Resistance Brass a couple of meters away. Maybe he had been eavesdropping?

“Rey.” Her hand found his of its own accord. His palm was warm and damp with sweat. Something inside her chest loosened. She squeezed.

“Chewie strong-armed me into trying to get some rest before the next phase shift,” she said by way of greeting. Even in the crowded air, the comforting familiarity of his presence pulled at her. Her first friend. She wanted to keep him close and never let him go again. “I don’t know if I can.”

Finn released a breathy sound that might have been a laugh. “I know what you mean. Things have been... crazy.”

Exhaustion and naked terror shivered underneath the levity in his tone, and briefly, his fingers tightened around hers. She pressed her arm against his, their elbows bumping. _We’re safe,_ she wanted to say to him. But a part of her, still twanging with the shock of so much change and the crowded buzz of so many souls crammed into the Falcon’s small space, knew it was a lie.

The exhaustion of the last several days: stealing the _Falcon_ on Jakku, Takodana, Han dying, fighting Kylo Ren, finding Luke Skywalker, convincing Luke Skywalker to teach her, learning from Luke Skywalker, dealing with Luke Skywalker being Luke Skywalker, and Kylo kriffing Ren again, that horrible little shit of a human, it all swelled inside of her. Her insides felt more crowded than Han’s ship. Everything was heavy and huge, and Rey was very small.

It was the opposite of the good nights Rey had on Jakku --the ones where the desert wind blew through her old Imperial warship and whistled quietly around her, and the sky vast and and dark and spangled above. The Force had been singing through her then, she realized. The universe had been open and bare underneath her skin. And now everything was closed in and stank of dirt and blood and the stress-secretions of the exhausted sentients of the Resistance, battling fatigue and creeping despair.

Finn radiated heat through his jacket and against her skin. His presence felt like the only thing keeping her upright. If he left, like he had left before, she would be adrift. She didn’t want to be alone.

“Could you-” She looked down at their interlaced fingers and pressed herself against his bulk. He shifted his weight and did the same with her. They leaned into each other, listing in the miniscule, chaotic currents of the _Falcon’s_ crowded air. “You could come with me to my quarters if you want.” His skin was much darker than hers. She traced the bony line of his knuckles with her eyes. “There’s a spare bunk. You look like you need a moment to breathe.”

“Breathe,” he echoed. He inhaled deeply and nodded. His fingers shifted as he briefly tightened his grip on her hand. “That sounds like a good idea.”

She released a breath she didn’t know she had been holding.

“Bu-but only if it’s alright with you,” he stammered, stepping away as if realizing that they had been standing too close.

Rey rolled her eyes and caught his hand again. She tugged him in the direction of the sleeping quarters.

Propriety wasn’t something she was entirely familiar with, and she didn’t know what kind of interpersonal conventions stormtroopers adhered to, but surely she and Finn had been through enough with each other not to need things like etiquette and personal space to mediate how they were together. They were friends.

 _Friends._ The word tasted strange inside her skull. As if it didn’t quite know how to fit. She hadn’t had those in Jakku. There were people she knew, and beings she’d occasionally helped, who helped her out now and again too, but there was no one who felt like their hand belonged in her hand the way Finn’s did in hers.

Finn was a friend.

More than that.

Finn was _hers._

It was strange. But it was good. A relief. The warmth from his body radiated inside of her, spreading through their joined hands and out into her until it felt as if she could swallow the entire ship up into the cosiness of their shared heat.

Her quarters still smelled like Ach To’s sea-salt air. The small room was bare. She and Chewbacca had distributed all the pillows and blankets and cobbled-together supplies of the ship to the Resistance. Everyone was tired. Everyone deserved a chance to rest. Rey’s bunk and the empty bunk across it were nothing but metal platforms covered in thin cloth.

  
Finn lingered at the open doorway, fingers still loosely curled around Rey’s. Behind him, the Falcon was crowded and rumbling with sentients. Inside, everything was quiet and still. But still, he hesitated. He didn’t have a protocol for this.

Fraternizing among soldiers was discouraged, but it wasn’t forbidden, and it hadn’t really occurred to him to do so back then. There had been advances--in the barracks they were impossible to avoid--but when he’d made it clear that he wasn’t interested, no one bothered with the effort to _make_ him interested.

Besides, he wasn’t a stormtrooper anymore. He was someone else. He was someone who felt a good warmth when he saw certain people, who held hands with others, who... kissed.

He shook his head minutely. Rose was in the galley with what remained of Medical. Her injuries were minor, but they still needed tending to. That kiss had felt good, and her lips were soft and made his insides feel... sweet. He liked her. But now that he was away from her, the memory of it, of her telling him she loved him, it scared him.

Would love lead to fraternization? Was that the protocol for those kinds of interactions? Would being alone with someone in their quarters require that they _fraternize_? From his locker-room conversations with other ‘troopers, it had seemed to be the case.

And that thought felt like too much. Like rubbing vigorously against a patch of skin already worn red and raw. Like music on top of music on top of three different people whispering into each ear. He wanted to curl up inside of himself and escape. He wanted to scream and throw a punch. He wanted to do what he had tried to do twice before: _run_.

But he was with Rey. And Rey was an exhalation. A release of tension long held.

Rey was Rey.

She wouldn’t make him do anything he wasn’t ready for, and he certainly wasn’t going to push for anything with her. He stepped into the room and let the automatic door slide shut.

It was quiet. Finally.

Rey unlaced her fingers from his, and he found himself reaching for her before he remembered that they were both safe.

She sank into the bunk against the wall opposite the door with a creak of metal and a low sigh. It was a small room. There was a small pile of messily-sorted mechanical parts and tools scattered over a tiny desk in the far side from the door. Rey’s staff leaned against the corner. The room was bare otherwise.

It suited her. Pared down and sparse, like the desert she came from.

“You don’t have to just stand there, you know.” Rey was unlacing her boots. She gestured to the bunk opposite from hers. “Have a lie-down if you like.” Her voice petered out into a whisper, and she stared at his feet from her position, bent and stretched down over her boots.

“Actually no.” Her voice was small. Shy. She didn’t sound like herself. “Could you-” She grunted as she uncurled to look up at him. Her face looked naked. Like a child’s. “I missed you.”

Something inside of Finn unraveled. He exhaled. She didn’t need to say anything more.

He sank down beside her. The small bed protested the additional weight with a contemptuous creak and settled. She was a rustle of movement and faint wind beside him, and he busied himself with removing his jacket and his boots.

When he was done, he felt Rey shift. She stretched out on her side, her head pillowed against her arm. She tugged at his elbow. He complied.

The bed was small; they lay facing one another, legs tangling. And there they were again, Finn and Rey, Rey and Finn, side by side.

She twitched. Shivered. It wasn’t cold, but he understood. Exhaustion, fear, excitement, grief, and the pinpricks of shining, desperate hope shuddered through him too. And it felt like there was so little of him left.

So much had happened.

So much was still to come.

He pulled his arm around her. They shuffled closer to one another until it seemed that they would slot together to form a single unit. His fist bunched into the fabric at the back of her shirt, and he could feel her hand against his spine, straining to keep him close.

She tucked her head underneath his chin and sighed into his chest.

The Resistance was in tatters. The First Order had all but crushed the last flickering remnants of their hope. The galaxy felt huge and terrifying and bleak.

But at least for now, for them, things were alright.

 

\- End -

 

And here's a bonus bit of fanart, to show you just how thoroughly these two got knocked out. It doesn't show in the picture, but Rey made a big ol' puddle of drool. Poor babies.


End file.
